Hiam a Mac user and don't have a pc and never used one before,so please forgive my ignorance (specially am new here )

I got the "PocketMac pro" to mount iMate Jam on my Mac desktop.

after unziping "AdobeAcrobatReaderV20PPCEN.zip", i copied it to my Jam, specifically to (My Device/Program Files/Tools)

then from within "the Jam" i went to "file explorer" find the Readerdouble click it and when i tried to run it from my Jam i got:"it's not a valid pocket pc application"i also tried "WinDjView-0.3.5.exe"where did i go wrong?is there a better way to install exe. file in my case?

Most PocketPC programs are distributed as Windows XP executables, which interface with ActiveSync so that the PocketPC program will be installed the next time you sync the PPC with Windows.

If you have a Mac, PocketMac Pro includes a tool to search for CAB files inside Windows installers, but it is limited and does not always work. If it doesn't work and you don't have Virtual PC, you'll have to hope that a site like FreeCabs provides the PocketPC file for direct download. Make sure you don't violate any copyright laws. (FreeCabs claims to have permission, wherever it is necessary, for the files it posts.)

You could also check the vendor's own site for a direct PocketPC installer, or ask their support if they don't provide one, but many vendors will refuse to offer any help of any kind once they hear that you have a Mac.

You're welcome. I have a Mac and I actually do have Adobe Reader working on my PocketPC, and honestly I don't remember how I did it. But I do have Virtual PC, so I usually find one way or another to get almost any PocketPC program to work.

Installing ActiveSync on Virtual PC is a huge pain - it was the most difficult Windows software I had ever installed, until I tried to install MS Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Virtual PC, which literally took an entire week. If you do try it, my only recommendations would be 1) there are still a few web sites that say it is impossible, but this is not true anymore, and 2) MS installers tend to get stuck at certain points for many, many hours, especially on Virtual PC, but they actually do wake up if you leave them running for long enough (usually).

If you don't have access to Virtual PC, see if you can find a friend with a Windows machine who will let you install ActiveSync (or who already has it installed). In most cases, if ActiveSync is installed, you can run the Windows XP installer for the PocketPC program and then find the CAB file somewhere on the Windows machine's hard disk, even if you can't get an actual sync going. Once you get the CAB, you just need to send it to the PocketPC using Bluetooth, The Missing Sync, PocketMac, whatever. You could even copy it to a memory card and run it from there. I wish I could extract the CABs for you, but this sounds highly illegal to me... I've been kinda busy lately anyway.

Technically, there are two different types of EXEs. EXEs are normally Windows programs, which means they don't run on a PocketPC. Normally, people associate CAB files with PocketPC programs, since it is generally a CAB file that is installed on a PocketPC when you add a new program.

However, CAB files are actually archives with a built-in installer script, and if you look carefully, you will discover that they actually install whatever libraries they want as well as an actual program file, probably somewhere in C:\Program Files\, and the actual PocketPC executable is indeed a .EXE file. Still, running a Windows EXE on a PocketPC is just like trying to run a PocketPC program on a Palm or an Amiga or whatever - due to processor differences as well as OS differences, it is impossible without building a complex emulator. Windows XP is far more complex that WIndows Mobile, and PocketPCs are already slower than Windows XP machines, so trying to build an XP emulator for a PocketPC would certainly be a disaster.

If you're not a developer, I wouldn't worry too much about PocketPC EXE files - what you really need is a way to get the CAB file.

One other trick I didn't mention, since it is not generally needed for PocketMac users, is that some Windows EXE installers can just be renamed to .ZIP and decompressed into their component files, which will hopefully get the CAB out of them. This won't work for anything more complicated than a basic self-extracting archive, so make sure you keep a backup of the unmodified EXE. If you try forcing it to be a ZIP, it may work with only the Finder's dearchiver, only Stuffit Expander, or both, so it may be worth trying both methods if the first one doesn't work.

So the answer to your question is, "There is more than one type of EXE file." If you actually get a PocketPC EXE, you can just send it to your PPC and use it, but it is impossible to run a Windows XP EXE on anything other than Windows/a Windows emulator.